Dick Cavett talks living in Montauk, Muhammad Ali, Marlon Brando, more

A recent visit to Dick Cavett's 1912 Greek Revival mansion in the hills outside Ridgefield, Connecticut, is a visit to the deep past — his own mostly. Vestiges of a long, public life fill the downstairs, and keepsakes crowd every high-gloss antique side table next to each sprawling couch. There's a comfortable, Old World charm to this splendid if slightly faded beauty, which has so many rooms that even the legendary talk-show host living here admits that he hasn't "seen some of them."   

A television set, meanwhile, is nowhere in sight. Cavett, 86, spent most of his professional life on half a dozen networks and hosted nine different programs, with one ("The Dick Cavett Show," ABC, 1969-1975) a must-stop for every actor, author, artist, musician and newsmaker who sought the sort of prestige and gravity that only a Cavett sit-down could confer. 

 "The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson" may have been TV's biggest late night draw at the time, but Cavett's was far and away the hippest. 

But Cavett says he doesn't watch a lot of TV these days, and professes amazement when reminded of all that time he spent in front of a camera ("How strange!"). Because of a stroke about three years ago, his focus now is on his health (he's doing fine, he says), which has led him to the woods of Connecticut. Cavett and his wife, Martha Rogers, a business author and management consultant, got the house because it's close to a hospital. Plus, the place reminded them of Tick Hall — Cavett's cherished Montauk retreat where he and first wife, Broadway star Carrie Nye (who died in 2006), spent half a century. 

Then, there was this added benefit: In its early days, Harry Houdini practiced some of his famous underwater escape tricks in the pool out back. For Cavett, a lifelong magician, that was the clincher. 

Repeats of Cavett's ABC classic have recently found new audiences on YouTube, streaming service Crackle, and the nostalgia TV network Decades, while a PBS "American Masters"' portrait of his long TV association with Groucho Marx aired in December. (Another retrospective on another favorite guest — Muhammad Ali — aired in 2018.) 

During a recent visit, I spoke with him about all this and more (this interview was edited for length and clarity).

Do you watch any late night TV — or any TV at all these days? 

I'm excited to cut out a lot of current events, and there were two or three [news] shows that all covered the same thing, and it's better to do almost anything more appealing than to hear the same stories three times [but] I watch MSNBC and try never to miss [Stephen] Colbert — we've become friends — but it is hard to talk about the other talk show hosts because you always leave half of them out. I do know them all and don't have any enemies among them, fortunately. 

What are you reading then? 

Getting a lot of good reading done, and for years I've resolved to read some Mark Twain every day. I love it. I don't remember when, but I found a 16 or 17-volume autographed edition that I can dip into any time I want. 

This is a long way from Montauk. So why did you leave there after all those years? 

I really loved the place but Montauk is not what it was. It was a sleepy little fishing village then some beautiful people came and they opened a disco and Montaukers felt they'd lost their wonderful Montauk. 

The original Tick Hall was also gone — burned down in 1997? 

It was horrible. We were in New York at the time and got the news over the phone that this great Stanford White house was only a chimney. Lots of books and pictures were lost, too. 

Then there was that 2001 documentary about the rebuilding of it? 

Yeah, the guy who did it [Scott Morris] did a very good job. What was it called? Oh, right, "From the Ashes," although someone sent me a story about it from a paper in Kansas that had the typo "From the Asses." I assume it was a typo. 

Let's get to some personal history. Here's something I never knew about you: Martha told me you were a pommel horse champion in high school?

I was very good at it, and never dreamed I would be the state champion but I was, and have the medal somewhere. It's the only thing I admire about myself. 

Thinking about key influences, I did want to ask about your mother (who died when Cavett was 10).

Her name was Era, but that was short for Erabel — her parents were Welsh — Erabel Richards Cavett. My dad [Alva, both parents were teachers] said, the thing that's worse for her is she won't be able to see how you would develop. But there are lots of others who died not knowing their children's futures.

That other key influence is Nebraska. What is it about the state and late night hosts [Cavett was born and raised here, while Johnny Carson was born in Iowa and also raised there]? 

Yeah, Johnny had great affection for Nebraska, too. People say it's a flat state, but the hell it is. There's an area of Nebraska called the Sand Hills and it is a paradise. 

Perhaps the biggest influence of all was Yale (Cavett's alma mater)? 

When I got in, to my amazement, I thought "Jesus, Yale is in New Haven, Connecticut, and that's not very far from New York so I'll see that, too!" I remember the train that I took forever from Nebraska and they finally said the next stop, and it was the name of a popular radio show — Grand Central Station. I sneaked into rehearsals [at the Schubert in New Haven] and saw the premiere performance of "My Fair Lady" directed by Moss Hart … When all the other guys went to Smith or Vassar on the weekends, I went to New York and sneaked into "The Jackie Gleason Show" and "The Garry Moore Show."

And famously, Jack Paar's "Tonight Show." While working at Time magazine as a copy boy, you started writing for him? 

Someone had left the Journal American [a long-defunct New York daily] open to a column on my messy desk, and I saw in bold print the name "Jack Paar" and that he loves his monologue more than anything in life. I said, "my typewriter still works. I'll write something and get it to him." I had learned how to sneak into the show, and after he came out of the bathroom an hour before airtime [I handed him the jokes].

And that led to the Big Break, as a hired gun on the show's writing staff. 

There were four writers, so I was a new kid. which caused a certain amount of tension with one in particular because Jack started using my stuff right away. Jack's head writer was a [jerk], so much so that my great friend and colleague David Lloyd [who wrote for "The Mary Tyler Moore Show," "Cheers," and so much else] told him "your parents owe the world a retraction."

In fact, you were a veteran comedy writer long before talk show stardom, and even had the peculiar talent of being able to make an anagram out of anyone's name.

It became a bit of a curse because it came so readily. I'd realize I'd just forgotten what a guest had been saying because I had anagrammed their name or had started to.

You then wrote for Carson's "Tonight" after Paar left. He genuinely liked you, too, right? 

And I liked him. I do remember one day when I had sloughed off the monologue, and the phone rang — I'll never forget it — and it was Johnny saying, "Richard, I think you're capable of a better monologue than this." I died for a while. I had handed in crap and he was right. I never tried to do that again.

It's been said that as talk show hosts, you were the exact opposite of Carson, in that he hated to be off the stage, and you couldn't wait to get off it. True? 

That's true, yeah. I've been quoted saying Johnny Carson was only happy when he was on the air but that's a little exaggerated — he wasn't suicidal the rest of the day. But it's true enough. He did read magazines and was up on a lot of current events so he wouldn't appear dumb. He was a lot smarter than he thought. Do you know about his mother? 

When he got some major award and she told him, "I guess they know what they're doing"? 

Yes. That really hurt him. He even said that on the air. 

Carson lasted 30 years on one show and you lasted nearly 40 years on about nine or so, from ABC to finally TCM.

How strange! 

Was it one of those cases where you wanted out but they just kept dragging you back in? 

I kept [reading] that "Cavett was on many shows" and I thought, what are they talking about? I guess I had repressed that fact. I did love the first show [on ABC] and after some weeks had gone by realized that you can have fun with this.

Fun indeed. You quickly became the toast of late-night TV. 

There's nothing like the feeling when you're doing a show and it's going great and you just don't want it to end. 

Did you ever pay much attention to the ratings? 

I tried never to think about it. I hated it when [columnists] said "Dick Cavett is going to try to knock Johnny Carson off the air." I'd go, "That's not going to happen!" Then they'd often use me as a stick to beat other people like Merv [Griffin] or Johnny. Like "Cavett has John Kenneth Galbraith but Carson has Charo." I hated that. 

Ah, yes, the "i" word — intellectual. The newspapers called you out on that, too.

Oh, God, That word. I learned to loathe it. The stuff [I did] was what I wanted to see although I did get warned. Someone once wrote a column saying "dumb it up, Dick. You're not going to last very long having that person on." I never thought of myself as an intellectual and don't have the makings of being a true one. 

You did often, however, get around to the biggest of subjects — the war in Vietnam, racism.

How could you not talk about it? 

Nevertheless, you got pushback from ABC, including on the very first show. 

You're talking about that immortal line. I was waiting to be congratulated [by a top network executive] who instead says, "Nobody gives a [expletive] what Muhammad Ali or Gore Vidal think about Vietnam." I knew I was in trouble … I don't know. It never occurred to me that some people would object to it.

Carson rarely if ever did this kind of stuff. 

One night, probably tired of being told that he didn't do relevant things, he said [in reference to George Wallace], "How a racist governor could be a possible candidate for president is scandalous." That was the only time I ever heard him do that and I think he did because he was goaded. Johnny didn't trust himself [because] someone would say, well "Cavett could do that but not Carson." I hated that. 

"The Dick Cavett Show" lasted from 1969 to 1975 but ABC had begun to cut it dramatically back in 1973 (or as the critic John Leonard, put it at the time, "they cut off an arm, and then a leg, and then another arm, until his appearances were so infrequent it was like trying to find Bigfoot somewhere in the Sierras.") Unlike "Tonight," you and your guests debated racism, the Vietnam War, and finally Watergate. Had ABC had enough? Why was it dropped? 

I don't know and I'm not sure anybody does. I don't remember a staggering moment when I was told, "You're canceled." But I did think, that's OK. It takes up all of my time and there's stuff I'd like to be doing. That's a huge difference between [Paar and me]. It didn't bother me not being on. I just thought, gosh, I'm going to work again sometime — fine. I didn't suffer or mourn. I had some kind of freak confidence that something would come along. But I couldn't wait for [the show] to stop because there were so many things I wanted to do and couldn't wait to get to them — although I can't remember what they are now. 

Where to begin! You hosted many more shows, wrote a book or two, did a couple of HBO docuseries and many PBS specials — including "Dick Cavett's Watergate" and "Dick Cavett's Vietnam" — became a columnist for The New York Times, did movie cameos, and...

I keep finding out about movies that I was in and that I didn't know about. "Beetlejuice," "Forrest Gump" … That's one of my problems. I can't remember when anything was except Pearl Harbor.

And I suspect you also just watched the waves roll in on some Hamptons beach after the ABC show wrapped.

I don't seem to have suffered from it.